Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons: Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben

by Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot

The attack was witnessed, not only by several of us, but also by two or three officers as well. The latter expostulated with the non-commissioned officer upon his action. As for ourselves our gorge rose at this savage onslaught, and we hurried to the Commandant with the object of being first to narrate the incident. He listened to our story of the outrage but refused to be convinced. We persisted and mentioned that the officers had been present and could support our statements. But the latter, naturally perhaps, declined to confirm our story. They denied having seen the blow struck. Still, we were so emphatic and persevering that Major Bach, in order to settle the matter, sent for the non-commissioned officer to whom he referred the accusation we had made.

This worthy listened with a smile lurking round his mouth. When Major Bach had completed his statement, the non-commissioned officer, with a mocking laugh, denied the charge, and presented his rifle for Major Bach's inspection. The rifle was perfectly sound! At the production of this rebutting evidence Major Bach gave us a queer look, insisted that we had trumped up the charge, and refused to listen to us any further. So we were compelled to go away crestfallen and yet amazed as to how the guilty officer had surmounted his difficulty.

Subsequently we discovered that the non-commissioned officer, thoroughly alarmed at his rifle snapping in twain, not knowing how he would be able to explain the circumstance of his weapon being broken, and having heard that we had hastened to the Commandant to lodge our complaint, darted into the guard-room, concealed the conclusive evidence of his guilt, and appropriated the sound rifle of a comrade. This was the weapon he had produced before Major Bach so triumphantly. We never heard how the non-commissioned officer ultimately explained away his broken rifle upon parade when the trick was certain to be discovered, but bearing in mind the iron method which prevails in the German army he must have been hard put to it to have advanced a plausible excuse when arraigned. Doubtless there was considerable trouble over the episode but we never heard anything more about it, although we would have dearly loved to have been acquainted with the sequel.

Foiled in our attempt to secure redress for an outraged prisoner we considered the episode closed. But it was not. Directly we had left the office Major Bach sent for the Pole who had been attacked. He related his story which was naturally a confirmation of our charge. But he was set down as an unprincipled liar, and one of whom an example must be made. Forthwith he was condemned to four hours at the post on the charge of fighting and endeavouring to impugn the probity of the German guard, who can do no wrong.

The misery endured by this poor wretch is indescribable. In this instance, in order to secure enhanced effect, according to the lights of Major Bach, the prisoner was forced to stand on tip-toe against the post, while the upper rope was passed around his neck. This rope was left somewhat loose, and as nearly as I can describe, was looped in the form of a double knot. Being on tip-toe the hapless wretch was speedily transferred, by his toes giving way, to a hanging position. His head fell forward, as he gradually lapsed into unconsciousness, until it pressed against the restraining slip-knot. The consequence was that he suffered the agonies of slow strangulation in addition to the searing of his hands and ankles, while the weight of his body dragged his neck more tightly than otherwise would have been the case, against the upper rope. His face presented a terrifying sight, being quite blue, from his inability to breathe, except with the greatest difficulty. His mouth was wide open and his tongue, which protruded, was exceedingly swollen. His eyes were half out of their sockets. But he had to serve the sentence of four hours, and although he became unconscious time after time and had to be released, water always brought him to his senses to undergo a further spell upon the fiendish rack until the sentence had been well and truly served.

On one occasion a poor wretch condemned to this torture, after having become unconscious, was taken down, revived, and incarcerated for the night in the guard-room. The next morning he was marched out again and re-tied up to complete his sentence.

Major Bach, as if suddenly inspired, conceived a fiendish means of accentuating the agony of a prisoner condemned to this punishment. The man would be tied to the post about the middle of the morning. The summer sun beat fiercely upon the post and the man's hat was removed. Consequently, as the poor wretch's head dropped forward on his chest, its crown became exposed to the fierce heat of the sun. Thus to the pain of the torture inflicted by the tightly tied ropes, and the strangling sensation produced by the throat pressing against the restraining rope, was added the racking torment of intolerable heat playing upon a sensitive part of the human body. The astonishing wonder is that none of the unhappy wretches suffered sun-stroke or went crazy while bound up in this manner, because the sun's heat intensely aggravated the agonies of thirst. But the sun-bath consummated Major Bach's greatest ambition. It caused the victim to writhe and twist more frantically, which in turn forced him to shriek and howl more vociferously and continuously.

When a prisoner was in the height of his torment the eminent Commandant would stroll up, and from a couple of paces away would stand, legs wide apart and hands clasped behind his back, surveying the results of his devilry with the greatest self-satisfaction. As the prisoner groaned and moaned he would fling coarse joke, badinage, and gibe at the helpless wretch, and when the latter struggled and writhed in order to seek some relief, though in vain, he would laugh uproariously, urge the unhappy man to kick more energetically, and then shriek with delight as his advice was apparently taken to heart only to accentuate the torture.

Sunday was the day of days which the tyrant preferred for meting out this punishment. In the first place it was a day of rest, and so a prisoner's time and labour were not lost. Even if he were strung up to the post all day he could be turned out to work on the Monday morning as usual. But the governing reason for the selection of this day was because it offered such a novel entertainment for the gaping German crowds. The public, as already mentioned, were invited to the camp on Sunday mornings to see the prisoners. Young girls and raw recruits considered a trip to Sennelager on the chance of seeing a writhing, tortured prisoner as one of the delights of the times, and a sight which should not be missed on any account.

They clustered on the path on the opposite side of the road facing the stake, laughing and joking among themselves. The recruits, who openly manifested their intense amusement, cheered frantically when the trussed wretch gave an abnormally wild and ear-piercing shriek of pain. At his moans, groans, and desperate abortive attempts to release himself, the girls would laugh as gaily as if witnessing the antics of a clown at a circus, and were quite unrestrained in their jubilant applause. This was the feature of the punishment which grated upon the nerves of the prisoners who were unable to lift a finger or voice a word in protest. That a fellow-prisoner should be condemned to suffer such hellish torture as was inflicted was bad enough, but that it should offer a side-show to exuberant Sunday German holiday crowds we considered to be the height of our humiliation and a crown to our sufferings.